Why We Fight (2005 film)
Encyclopedia
Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki
, is a 2006 documentary film
about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II
-era eponymous propaganda movies
commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers
.
Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower
's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 22 January 2006, and then was released on DVD on 27 June 2006, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
. The documentary also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for TV productions.
. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the Government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter, are politician John McCain
, political scientist and former-CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson
, politician Richard Perle
, neoconservative commentator William Kristol
, writer Gore Vidal
, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione
.
Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War
veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks
, and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; and that of a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army
because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a female military explosives scientist who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee
child from Vietnam
in 1975.
to the United Kingdom's BBC, Estonia's ETV and numerous European broadcasters" but no U.S. names. The Sundance Institute
did, however, provide completion funding. Writer and director Jarecki said "serious examination of Eisenhower and the aftermath of his speech proved 'too radical' for potential American funders for his film" and except for Sundance, he "could not raise a dollar in the U.S."
Elected to the United States Senate
in 1986, he is a former U.S. Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war
.
Richard Perle
, Chairman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board (2001–2003)
Worked the U.S. Government for three decades, and is an architect of the G. W. Bush Administration's foreign policy
. As a writer, he regularly is published in conservative news publications.
William Kristol
, Editor, The Weekly Standard
A political theorist identified with the neoconservative movement, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century
think tank
in 1997.
, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
A senior associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
, Washington, D.C.
Gwynne Dyer
, Military Historian
He is a military historian, writer, and journalist who has worked for the Canadian, British, and American militaries. He published books, articles, information papers, and a radio series, about international affairs
.
Susan Eisenhower
, Granddaughter of President Eisenhower
Senior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute's director of programs. She is serving a third appointment to the Committee on International Security and Arms Control
(CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences
.
John Eisenhower
, Son of President Eisenhower, Military Historian
A military historian member of White House staff during his father's administration. He is a retired Brigadier General
(AUS) and served as U.S. ambassador
to Belgium, 1969 and 1971.
Chalmers Johnson
, Central Intelligence Agency
1967-1973, Political Scientist
With a fifty-year career in foreign policy, he is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute
. An academic at the University of California
, he has written many articles and books.
Charles Lewis
, Center for Public Integrity
Founder, and ex-executive director, Center for Public Integrity
—non-profit, non-partisan "watch-dog" organisation established in 1989—investigating and reporting their research about U.S. public policies
Wilton Sekzer, Retired police sergeant, New York City Police Department
/ Vietnam veteran
Vietnam veteran, door gunner from the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion, whose son was killed on 9/11. After the attacks, he says the Bush Administration made him believe Saddam Hussein
was responsible. He e-mailed every military branch, asking if his son's name might be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. Later, he is uncertain if he should regret his actions, after hearing President Bush claim he does not know from where people got the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein
and the 9/11 attacks.
William Solomon
Twenty-three-year-old soldier. Deployed to Iraq on 10 January 2005, for 18 months, as a helicopter mechanic. It appears Solomon made it to Sergeant in the 1st Battalion 52nd Aviation Regiment
, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, according to a website that reports on different activities of soldiers. There is [a photo of Solomon] and a Specialist talking to basketball coaches in Kuwait at Camp Virginia. The coaches are on their way to Iraq to participate in Operation Hardwood 5 which is a program that brings US basketball coaches to the American troops in the Middle East.
Frank "Chuck" Spinney, Retired Military Analyst
Lehigh University
-schooled mechanical engineer (class of 1967), worked in the USAF, in Ohio, before working in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in 1977. He became a harsh critic of the Pentagon, later known as the "Conscience of the Pentagon", when he attacked the spiraling spending increase in the report "Defense facts of life", published in 1982, later known as the "Spinney Report", which earned a cover on "Time" magazine.
Gore Vidal
, Author of Imperial America
Writer, playwright, screen writer, novelist, and essayist, he has written books on American foreign policy explaining the American empire.
U.S.A.F. stealth fighter pilots 'Fuji' and 'Tooms' dropped the first bombs on Baghdad city, starting the Iraq War in 2003.
Colonel Richard Treadway, Commander USAF Stealth Fighter
Squadron
Vice-Commander of the 49th Fighter Wing
of the U.S. Air Force
Colonel Walter W. Saeger, Jr., Director, U.S. Air Force Munitions Directorate
Director of the Air-to-Surface Munitions Directorate, Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base
in Utah.
Karen Kwiatkowski
A retired U.S. Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel
of the Pentagon
working with the National Security Agency
.
James G. Roche
, Secretary of the Air Force
Twentieth Secretary of the U.S. Air Force
Nguyet Anh Duong
Inventor of the thermobaric bunker buster
bomb, refugee from South Vietnam
, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
From 1984 to 1987, Col. Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, U.S.N., Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC. In the 1990s Col. Wilkerson was Director of the U.S.M.C. War College, Quantico, Virginia. He has written much about military and national security affairs in mainstream and professional journals.
Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki
, is a 2006 documentary film
about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II
-era eponymous propaganda movies
commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers
.
Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower
's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 22 January 2006, and then was released on DVD on 27 June 2006, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
. The documentary also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for TV productions.
. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the Government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter, are politician John McCain
, political scientist and former-CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson
, politician Richard Perle
, neoconservative commentator William Kristol
, writer Gore Vidal
, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione
.
Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War
veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks
, and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; and that of a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army
because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a female military explosives scientist who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee
child from Vietnam
in 1975.
to the United Kingdom's BBC, Estonia's ETV and numerous European broadcasters" but no U.S. names. The Sundance Institute
did, however, provide completion funding. Writer and director Jarecki said "serious examination of Eisenhower and the aftermath of his speech proved 'too radical' for potential American funders for his film" and except for Sundance, he "could not raise a dollar in the U.S."
Elected to the United States Senate
in 1986, he is a former U.S. Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war
.
Richard Perle
, Chairman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board (2001–2003)
Worked the U.S. Government for three decades, and is an architect of the G. W. Bush Administration's foreign policy
. As a writer, he regularly is published in conservative news publications.
William Kristol
, Editor, The Weekly Standard
A political theorist identified with the neoconservative movement, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century
think tank
in 1997.
, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
A senior associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
, Washington, D.C.
Gwynne Dyer
, Military Historian
He is a military historian, writer, and journalist who has worked for the Canadian, British, and American militaries. He published books, articles, information papers, and a radio series, about international affairs
.
Susan Eisenhower
, Granddaughter of President Eisenhower
Senior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute's director of programs. She is serving a third appointment to the Committee on International Security and Arms Control
(CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences
.
John Eisenhower
, Son of President Eisenhower, Military Historian
A military historian member of White House staff during his father's administration. He is a retired Brigadier General
(AUS) and served as U.S. ambassador
to Belgium, 1969 and 1971.
Chalmers Johnson
, Central Intelligence Agency
1967-1973, Political Scientist
With a fifty-year career in foreign policy, he is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute
. An academic at the University of California
, he has written many articles and books.
Charles Lewis
, Center for Public Integrity
Founder, and ex-executive director, Center for Public Integrity
—non-profit, non-partisan "watch-dog" organisation established in 1989—investigating and reporting their research about U.S. public policies
Wilton Sekzer, Retired police sergeant, New York City Police Department
/ Vietnam veteran
Vietnam veteran, door gunner from the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion, whose son was killed on 9/11. After the attacks, he says the Bush Administration made him believe Saddam Hussein
was responsible. He e-mailed every military branch, asking if his son's name might be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. Later, he is uncertain if he should regret his actions, after hearing President Bush claim he does not know from where people got the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein
and the 9/11 attacks.
William Solomon
Twenty-three-year-old soldier. Deployed to Iraq on 10 January 2005, for 18 months, as a helicopter mechanic. It appears Solomon made it to Sergeant in the 1st Battalion 52nd Aviation Regiment
, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, according to a website that reports on different activities of soldiers. There is [a photo of Solomon] and a Specialist talking to basketball coaches in Kuwait at Camp Virginia. The coaches are on their way to Iraq to participate in Operation Hardwood 5 which is a program that brings US basketball coaches to the American troops in the Middle East.
Frank "Chuck" Spinney, Retired Military Analyst
Lehigh University
-schooled mechanical engineer (class of 1967), worked in the USAF, in Ohio, before working in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in 1977. He became a harsh critic of the Pentagon, later known as the "Conscience of the Pentagon", when he attacked the spiraling spending increase in the report "Defense facts of life", published in 1982, later known as the "Spinney Report", which earned a cover on "Time" magazine.
Gore Vidal
, Author of Imperial America
Writer, playwright, screen writer, novelist, and essayist, he has written books on American foreign policy explaining the American empire.
U.S.A.F. stealth fighter pilots 'Fuji' and 'Tooms' dropped the first bombs on Baghdad city, starting the Iraq War in 2003.
Colonel Richard Treadway, Commander USAF Stealth Fighter
Squadron
Vice-Commander of the 49th Fighter Wing
of the U.S. Air Force
Colonel Walter W. Saeger, Jr., Director, U.S. Air Force Munitions Directorate
Director of the Air-to-Surface Munitions Directorate, Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base
in Utah.
Karen Kwiatkowski
A retired U.S. Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel
of the Pentagon
working with the National Security Agency
.
James G. Roche
, Secretary of the Air Force
Twentieth Secretary of the U.S. Air Force
Nguyet Anh Duong
Inventor of the thermobaric bunker buster
bomb, refugee from South Vietnam
, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
From 1984 to 1987, Col. Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, U.S.N., Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC. In the 1990s Col. Wilkerson was Director of the U.S.M.C. War College, Quantico, Virginia. He has written much about military and national security affairs in mainstream and professional journals.
Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki
, is a 2006 documentary film
about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II
-era eponymous propaganda movies
commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers
.
Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower
's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 22 January 2006, and then was released on DVD on 27 June 2006, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
. The documentary also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for TV productions.
. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the Government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter, are politician John McCain
, political scientist and former-CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson
, politician Richard Perle
, neoconservative commentator William Kristol
, writer Gore Vidal
, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione
.
Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War
veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks
, and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; and that of a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army
because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a female military explosives scientist who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee
child from Vietnam
in 1975.
to the United Kingdom's BBC, Estonia's ETV and numerous European broadcasters" but no U.S. names. The Sundance Institute
did, however, provide completion funding. Writer and director Jarecki said "serious examination of Eisenhower and the aftermath of his speech proved 'too radical' for potential American funders for his film" and except for Sundance, he "could not raise a dollar in the U.S."
Elected to the United States Senate
in 1986, he is a former U.S. Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war
.
Richard Perle
, Chairman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board (2001–2003)
Worked the U.S. Government for three decades, and is an architect of the G. W. Bush Administration's foreign policy
. As a writer, he regularly is published in conservative news publications.
William Kristol
, Editor, The Weekly Standard
A political theorist identified with the neoconservative movement, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century
think tank
in 1997.
, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
A senior associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
, Washington, D.C.
Gwynne Dyer
, Military Historian
He is a military historian, writer, and journalist who has worked for the Canadian, British, and American militaries. He published books, articles, information papers, and a radio series, about international affairs
.
Susan Eisenhower
, Granddaughter of President Eisenhower
Senior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute's director of programs. She is serving a third appointment to the Committee on International Security and Arms Control
(CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences
.
John Eisenhower
, Son of President Eisenhower, Military Historian
A military historian member of White House staff during his father's administration. He is a retired Brigadier General
(AUS) and served as U.S. ambassador
to Belgium, 1969 and 1971.
Chalmers Johnson
, Central Intelligence Agency
1967-1973, Political Scientist
With a fifty-year career in foreign policy, he is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute
. An academic at the University of California
, he has written many articles and books.
Charles Lewis
, Center for Public Integrity
Founder, and ex-executive director, Center for Public Integrity
—non-profit, non-partisan "watch-dog" organisation established in 1989—investigating and reporting their research about U.S. public policies
Wilton Sekzer, Retired police sergeant, New York City Police Department
/ Vietnam veteran
Vietnam veteran, door gunner from the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion, whose son was killed on 9/11. After the attacks, he says the Bush Administration made him believe Saddam Hussein
was responsible. He e-mailed every military branch, asking if his son's name might be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. Later, he is uncertain if he should regret his actions, after hearing President Bush claim he does not know from where people got the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein
and the 9/11 attacks.
William Solomon
Twenty-three-year-old soldier. Deployed to Iraq on 10 January 2005, for 18 months, as a helicopter mechanic. It appears Solomon made it to Sergeant in the 1st Battalion 52nd Aviation Regiment
, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, according to a website that reports on different activities of soldiers. There is [a photo of Solomon] and a Specialist talking to basketball coaches in Kuwait at Camp Virginia. The coaches are on their way to Iraq to participate in Operation Hardwood 5 which is a program that brings US basketball coaches to the American troops in the Middle East.
Frank "Chuck" Spinney, Retired Military Analyst
Lehigh University
-schooled mechanical engineer (class of 1967), worked in the USAF, in Ohio, before working in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in 1977. He became a harsh critic of the Pentagon, later known as the "Conscience of the Pentagon", when he attacked the spiraling spending increase in the report "Defense facts of life", published in 1982, later known as the "Spinney Report", which earned a cover on "Time" magazine.
Gore Vidal
, Author of Imperial America
Writer, playwright, screen writer, novelist, and essayist, he has written books on American foreign policy explaining the American empire.
U.S.A.F. stealth fighter pilots 'Fuji' and 'Tooms' dropped the first bombs on Baghdad city, starting the Iraq War in 2003.
Colonel Richard Treadway, Commander USAF Stealth Fighter
Squadron
Vice-Commander of the 49th Fighter Wing
of the U.S. Air Force
Colonel Walter W. Saeger, Jr., Director, U.S. Air Force Munitions Directorate
Director of the Air-to-Surface Munitions Directorate, Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base
in Utah.
Karen Kwiatkowski
A retired U.S. Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel
of the Pentagon
working with the National Security Agency
.
James G. Roche
, Secretary of the Air Force
Twentieth Secretary of the U.S. Air Force
Nguyet Anh Duong
Inventor of the thermobaric bunker buster
bomb, refugee from South Vietnam
, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
From 1984 to 1987, Col. Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, U.S.N., Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC. In the 1990s Col. Wilkerson was Director of the U.S.M.C. War College, Quantico, Virginia. He has written much about military and national security affairs in mainstream and professional journals.
Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki is an author and a dramatic and documentary filmmaker based in New York.His works include Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Reagan, Freakonomics , Quest of the Carib Canoe, and Season of the...
, is a 2006 documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
-era eponymous propaganda movies
Why We Fight
Why We Fight is a series of seven war information training films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S...
commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
.
Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 22 January 2006, and then was released on DVD on 27 June 2006, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation. It was established in November 1979 as Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment, releasing 20 titles: The Anderson Tapes, Bell, Book and Candle, Born Free, Breakout,...
. The documentary also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for TV productions.
Synopsis
Why We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military–industrial complex and its fifty-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 Invasion of Iraq2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the Government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter, are politician John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
, political scientist and former-CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Ashby Johnson was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972...
, politician Richard Perle
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle is an American political advisor, consultant, and lobbyist who began his career in government, a senior staff member to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970’s...
, neoconservative commentator William Kristol
William Kristol
William Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel....
, writer Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. He was appointed to the presidency by the Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008...
.
Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
, and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; and that of a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a female military explosives scientist who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
child from Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
in 1975.
Producer's list
The producer's list included "more than a dozen organizations, from the Canadian Broadcasting CorporationCanadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
to the United Kingdom's BBC, Estonia's ETV and numerous European broadcasters" but no U.S. names. The Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981 that actively advances the work of filmmakers and storytellers worldwide...
did, however, provide completion funding. Writer and director Jarecki said "serious examination of Eisenhower and the aftermath of his speech proved 'too radical' for potential American funders for his film" and except for Sundance, he "could not raise a dollar in the U.S."
Politicians
Senator John McCainJohn McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
Elected to the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
in 1986, he is a former U.S. Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war
Early life and military career of John McCain
The early life and military career of John Sidney McCain III spans the first forty-five years of his life . McCain's father and grandfather were admirals in the United States Navy. McCain was born on August 29, 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone, and attended many schools growing up as his family moved...
.
Richard Perle
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle is an American political advisor, consultant, and lobbyist who began his career in government, a senior staff member to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970’s...
, Chairman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board (2001–2003)
Worked the U.S. Government for three decades, and is an architect of the G. W. Bush Administration's foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
. As a writer, he regularly is published in conservative news publications.
William Kristol
William Kristol
William Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel....
, Editor, The Weekly Standard
A political theorist identified with the neoconservative movement, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century
Project for the New American Century
The Project for the New American Century was an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. that lasted from 1997 to 2006. It was co-founded as a non-profit educational organization by neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan...
think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
in 1997.
Civilians
Joseph CirincioneJoseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. He was appointed to the presidency by the Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008...
, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
A senior associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...
, Washington, D.C.
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer, OC is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.Dyer was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen...
, Military Historian
He is a military historian, writer, and journalist who has worked for the Canadian, British, and American militaries. He published books, articles, information papers, and a radio series, about international affairs
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
.
Susan Eisenhower
Susan Eisenhower
Susan Elaine Eisenhower is a consultant, author, and expert on international security and relations between the Russian Federation and the United States of America. She is the daughter of John Eisenhower, and the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower...
, Granddaughter of President Eisenhower
Senior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute's director of programs. She is serving a third appointment to the Committee on International Security and Arms Control
Committee on International Security and Arms Control
The Committee on International Security and Arms Control , created in 1980 by the United States National Academy of Sciences , supports the nation and the public with his best members on concerns of international security and arms control. The CISAC maintains dialogues with Russia , China and...
(CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
.
John Eisenhower
John Eisenhower
John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower is the son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie. He is a retired United States Army officer and the author of several books of military history. He served as the U.S...
, Son of President Eisenhower, Military Historian
A military historian member of White House staff during his father's administration. He is a retired Brigadier General
Brigadier General
Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...
(AUS) and served as U.S. ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
to Belgium, 1969 and 1971.
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Ashby Johnson was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972...
, Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
1967-1973, Political Scientist
With a fifty-year career in foreign policy, he is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute
Japan Policy Research Institute
The Japan Policy Research Institute is a non-profit organization organized under section 501 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that was founded in 1994 by Chalmers Johnson and Steven C...
. An academic at the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
, he has written many articles and books.
Charles Lewis
Charles Lewis (journalist)
Charles Lewis is an investigative journalist based in Washington D.C. since 1977. Charles Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity and three other nonprofit organizations and is currently the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of...
, Center for Public Integrity
Founder, and ex-executive director, Center for Public Integrity
Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around...
—non-profit, non-partisan "watch-dog" organisation established in 1989—investigating and reporting their research about U.S. public policies
Wilton Sekzer, Retired police sergeant, New York City Police Department
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
/ Vietnam veteran
Vietnam veteran, door gunner from the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion, whose son was killed on 9/11. After the attacks, he says the Bush Administration made him believe Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
was responsible. He e-mailed every military branch, asking if his son's name might be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. Later, he is uncertain if he should regret his actions, after hearing President Bush claim he does not know from where people got the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
and the 9/11 attacks.
William Solomon
Twenty-three-year-old soldier. Deployed to Iraq on 10 January 2005, for 18 months, as a helicopter mechanic. It appears Solomon made it to Sergeant in the 1st Battalion 52nd Aviation Regiment
52nd Aviation Regiment (United States)
The 52nd Aviation Regiment is an aviation regiment of the U.S. Army.-Lineage:Constituted 31 May 1940 in the Regular Army as Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 204th Quartermaster BattalionActivated 10 June 1942 at Compton, California...
, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, according to a website that reports on different activities of soldiers. There is [a photo of Solomon] and a Specialist talking to basketball coaches in Kuwait at Camp Virginia. The coaches are on their way to Iraq to participate in Operation Hardwood 5 which is a program that brings US basketball coaches to the American troops in the Middle East.
Frank "Chuck" Spinney, Retired Military Analyst
Lehigh University
Lehigh University
Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...
-schooled mechanical engineer (class of 1967), worked in the USAF, in Ohio, before working in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in 1977. He became a harsh critic of the Pentagon, later known as the "Conscience of the Pentagon", when he attacked the spiraling spending increase in the report "Defense facts of life", published in 1982, later known as the "Spinney Report", which earned a cover on "Time" magazine.
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, Author of Imperial America
Writer, playwright, screen writer, novelist, and essayist, he has written books on American foreign policy explaining the American empire.
Military participants
'Fuji' and 'Tooms'U.S.A.F. stealth fighter pilots 'Fuji' and 'Tooms' dropped the first bombs on Baghdad city, starting the Iraq War in 2003.
Colonel Richard Treadway, Commander USAF Stealth Fighter
Stealth aircraft
Stealth aircraft are aircraft that use stealth technology to avoid detection by employing a combination of features to interfere with radar as well as reduce visibility in the infrared, visual, audio, and radio frequency spectrum. Development of stealth technology likely began in Germany during...
Squadron
Vice-Commander of the 49th Fighter Wing
49th Fighter Wing
The 49th Wing is an air combat unit of the United States Air Force and the host unit at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. The 49 WG is part of the Air Combat Command Twelfth Air Force....
of the U.S. Air Force
Colonel Walter W. Saeger, Jr., Director, U.S. Air Force Munitions Directorate
Director of the Air-to-Surface Munitions Directorate, Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base
Hill Air Force Base
Hill Air Force Base is a major U.S. Air Force Base located in northern Utah, just south of the city of Ogden, and near the towns of Clearfield, Riverdale, Roy, Sunset, and Layton. It is about north of Salt Lake City. The base was named in honor of Major Ployer Peter Hill of the U.S. Army Air...
in Utah.
Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen U. Kwiatkowski is an American activist and commentator. She is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S....
A retired U.S. Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...
of the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
working with the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
.
James G. Roche
James G. Roche
Dr. James G. Roche was the 20th Secretary of the Air Force, serving from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2005. Prior to serving as secretary, Roche served in the United States Navy for 23 years, and as an executive with Northrop Grumman....
, Secretary of the Air Force
Twentieth Secretary of the U.S. Air Force
Nguyet Anh Duong
Nguyet Anh Duong
Nguyet Anh Duong is a Vietnamese American scientist responsible for the creation of the Thermobaric weapon.She is noted as the "Scientist who developed the bomb that ended the war with Afghanistan" by the Vietnamese American National Gala.-Biography:...
Inventor of the thermobaric bunker buster
Bunker buster
A bunker buster is a bomb designed to penetrate hardened targets or targets buried deep underground.-Germany:Röchling shells were bunker-busting artillery shells, developed by German engineer August Cönders, based on the theory of increasing sectional density to improve penetration.They were tested...
bomb, refugee from South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
DVD commentators
Colonel Lawrence B. WilkersonLawrence Wilkerson
Lawrence B. "Larry" Wilkerson is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell...
, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
From 1984 to 1987, Col. Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, U.S.N., Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC. In the 1990s Col. Wilkerson was Director of the U.S.M.C. War College, Quantico, Virginia. He has written much about military and national security affairs in mainstream and professional journals.
See also
- List of American films of 2006
- Military-industrial complexMilitary-industrial complexMilitary–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
- Military KeynesianismMilitary KeynesianismMilitary Keynesianism is the accusation that John Maynard Keynes advocated government economic policy in which the government devotes large amounts of spending to the military in an effort to increase economic growth. In fact, the English economist John Maynard Keynes advocated that government...
External links
- Why We Fight official site at Sony Pictures ClassicsSony Pictures ClassicsSony Pictures Classics is an art-house film division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in December 1991 that distributes, produces and acquires specialty films from the United States and around the world. Its co-presidents are Michael Barker and Tom Bernard...
. - Interview with director Eugene Jarecki at Now Playing magazine.
- Why We Fight BBC'sBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Storyville page on Why We Fight - Why We Fight on Lower Manhattan Project, a site dedicated to 9/11 culture.
Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki is an author and a dramatic and documentary filmmaker based in New York.His works include Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Reagan, Freakonomics , Quest of the Carib Canoe, and Season of the...
, is a 2006 documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
-era eponymous propaganda movies
Why We Fight
Why We Fight is a series of seven war information training films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S...
commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
.
Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 22 January 2006, and then was released on DVD on 27 June 2006, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation. It was established in November 1979 as Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment, releasing 20 titles: The Anderson Tapes, Bell, Book and Candle, Born Free, Breakout,...
. The documentary also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for TV productions.
Synopsis
Why We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military–industrial complex and its fifty-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 Invasion of Iraq2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the Government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter, are politician John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
, political scientist and former-CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Ashby Johnson was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972...
, politician Richard Perle
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle is an American political advisor, consultant, and lobbyist who began his career in government, a senior staff member to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970’s...
, neoconservative commentator William Kristol
William Kristol
William Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel....
, writer Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. He was appointed to the presidency by the Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008...
.
Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
, and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; and that of a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a female military explosives scientist who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
child from Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
in 1975.
Producer's list
The producer's list included "more than a dozen organizations, from the Canadian Broadcasting CorporationCanadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
to the United Kingdom's BBC, Estonia's ETV and numerous European broadcasters" but no U.S. names. The Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981 that actively advances the work of filmmakers and storytellers worldwide...
did, however, provide completion funding. Writer and director Jarecki said "serious examination of Eisenhower and the aftermath of his speech proved 'too radical' for potential American funders for his film" and except for Sundance, he "could not raise a dollar in the U.S."
Politicians
Senator John McCainJohn McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
Elected to the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
in 1986, he is a former U.S. Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war
Early life and military career of John McCain
The early life and military career of John Sidney McCain III spans the first forty-five years of his life . McCain's father and grandfather were admirals in the United States Navy. McCain was born on August 29, 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone, and attended many schools growing up as his family moved...
.
Richard Perle
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle is an American political advisor, consultant, and lobbyist who began his career in government, a senior staff member to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970’s...
, Chairman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board (2001–2003)
Worked the U.S. Government for three decades, and is an architect of the G. W. Bush Administration's foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
. As a writer, he regularly is published in conservative news publications.
William Kristol
William Kristol
William Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel....
, Editor, The Weekly Standard
A political theorist identified with the neoconservative movement, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century
Project for the New American Century
The Project for the New American Century was an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. that lasted from 1997 to 2006. It was co-founded as a non-profit educational organization by neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan...
think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
in 1997.
Civilians
Joseph CirincioneJoseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. He was appointed to the presidency by the Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008...
, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
A senior associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...
, Washington, D.C.
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer, OC is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.Dyer was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen...
, Military Historian
He is a military historian, writer, and journalist who has worked for the Canadian, British, and American militaries. He published books, articles, information papers, and a radio series, about international affairs
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
.
Susan Eisenhower
Susan Eisenhower
Susan Elaine Eisenhower is a consultant, author, and expert on international security and relations between the Russian Federation and the United States of America. She is the daughter of John Eisenhower, and the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower...
, Granddaughter of President Eisenhower
Senior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute's director of programs. She is serving a third appointment to the Committee on International Security and Arms Control
Committee on International Security and Arms Control
The Committee on International Security and Arms Control , created in 1980 by the United States National Academy of Sciences , supports the nation and the public with his best members on concerns of international security and arms control. The CISAC maintains dialogues with Russia , China and...
(CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
.
John Eisenhower
John Eisenhower
John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower is the son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie. He is a retired United States Army officer and the author of several books of military history. He served as the U.S...
, Son of President Eisenhower, Military Historian
A military historian member of White House staff during his father's administration. He is a retired Brigadier General
Brigadier General
Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...
(AUS) and served as U.S. ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
to Belgium, 1969 and 1971.
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Ashby Johnson was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972...
, Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
1967-1973, Political Scientist
With a fifty-year career in foreign policy, he is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute
Japan Policy Research Institute
The Japan Policy Research Institute is a non-profit organization organized under section 501 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that was founded in 1994 by Chalmers Johnson and Steven C...
. An academic at the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
, he has written many articles and books.
Charles Lewis
Charles Lewis (journalist)
Charles Lewis is an investigative journalist based in Washington D.C. since 1977. Charles Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity and three other nonprofit organizations and is currently the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of...
, Center for Public Integrity
Founder, and ex-executive director, Center for Public Integrity
Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around...
—non-profit, non-partisan "watch-dog" organisation established in 1989—investigating and reporting their research about U.S. public policies
Wilton Sekzer, Retired police sergeant, New York City Police Department
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
/ Vietnam veteran
Vietnam veteran, door gunner from the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion, whose son was killed on 9/11. After the attacks, he says the Bush Administration made him believe Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
was responsible. He e-mailed every military branch, asking if his son's name might be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. Later, he is uncertain if he should regret his actions, after hearing President Bush claim he does not know from where people got the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
and the 9/11 attacks.
William Solomon
Twenty-three-year-old soldier. Deployed to Iraq on 10 January 2005, for 18 months, as a helicopter mechanic. It appears Solomon made it to Sergeant in the 1st Battalion 52nd Aviation Regiment
52nd Aviation Regiment (United States)
The 52nd Aviation Regiment is an aviation regiment of the U.S. Army.-Lineage:Constituted 31 May 1940 in the Regular Army as Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 204th Quartermaster BattalionActivated 10 June 1942 at Compton, California...
, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, according to a website that reports on different activities of soldiers. There is [a photo of Solomon] and a Specialist talking to basketball coaches in Kuwait at Camp Virginia. The coaches are on their way to Iraq to participate in Operation Hardwood 5 which is a program that brings US basketball coaches to the American troops in the Middle East.
Frank "Chuck" Spinney, Retired Military Analyst
Lehigh University
Lehigh University
Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...
-schooled mechanical engineer (class of 1967), worked in the USAF, in Ohio, before working in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in 1977. He became a harsh critic of the Pentagon, later known as the "Conscience of the Pentagon", when he attacked the spiraling spending increase in the report "Defense facts of life", published in 1982, later known as the "Spinney Report", which earned a cover on "Time" magazine.
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, Author of Imperial America
Writer, playwright, screen writer, novelist, and essayist, he has written books on American foreign policy explaining the American empire.
Military participants
'Fuji' and 'Tooms'U.S.A.F. stealth fighter pilots 'Fuji' and 'Tooms' dropped the first bombs on Baghdad city, starting the Iraq War in 2003.
Colonel Richard Treadway, Commander USAF Stealth Fighter
Stealth aircraft
Stealth aircraft are aircraft that use stealth technology to avoid detection by employing a combination of features to interfere with radar as well as reduce visibility in the infrared, visual, audio, and radio frequency spectrum. Development of stealth technology likely began in Germany during...
Squadron
Vice-Commander of the 49th Fighter Wing
49th Fighter Wing
The 49th Wing is an air combat unit of the United States Air Force and the host unit at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. The 49 WG is part of the Air Combat Command Twelfth Air Force....
of the U.S. Air Force
Colonel Walter W. Saeger, Jr., Director, U.S. Air Force Munitions Directorate
Director of the Air-to-Surface Munitions Directorate, Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base
Hill Air Force Base
Hill Air Force Base is a major U.S. Air Force Base located in northern Utah, just south of the city of Ogden, and near the towns of Clearfield, Riverdale, Roy, Sunset, and Layton. It is about north of Salt Lake City. The base was named in honor of Major Ployer Peter Hill of the U.S. Army Air...
in Utah.
Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen U. Kwiatkowski is an American activist and commentator. She is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S....
A retired U.S. Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...
of the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
working with the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
.
James G. Roche
James G. Roche
Dr. James G. Roche was the 20th Secretary of the Air Force, serving from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2005. Prior to serving as secretary, Roche served in the United States Navy for 23 years, and as an executive with Northrop Grumman....
, Secretary of the Air Force
Twentieth Secretary of the U.S. Air Force
Nguyet Anh Duong
Nguyet Anh Duong
Nguyet Anh Duong is a Vietnamese American scientist responsible for the creation of the Thermobaric weapon.She is noted as the "Scientist who developed the bomb that ended the war with Afghanistan" by the Vietnamese American National Gala.-Biography:...
Inventor of the thermobaric bunker buster
Bunker buster
A bunker buster is a bomb designed to penetrate hardened targets or targets buried deep underground.-Germany:Röchling shells were bunker-busting artillery shells, developed by German engineer August Cönders, based on the theory of increasing sectional density to improve penetration.They were tested...
bomb, refugee from South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
DVD commentators
Colonel Lawrence B. WilkersonLawrence Wilkerson
Lawrence B. "Larry" Wilkerson is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell...
, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
From 1984 to 1987, Col. Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, U.S.N., Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC. In the 1990s Col. Wilkerson was Director of the U.S.M.C. War College, Quantico, Virginia. He has written much about military and national security affairs in mainstream and professional journals.
See also
- List of American films of 2006
- Military-industrial complexMilitary-industrial complexMilitary–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
- Military KeynesianismMilitary KeynesianismMilitary Keynesianism is the accusation that John Maynard Keynes advocated government economic policy in which the government devotes large amounts of spending to the military in an effort to increase economic growth. In fact, the English economist John Maynard Keynes advocated that government...
External links
- Why We Fight official site at Sony Pictures ClassicsSony Pictures ClassicsSony Pictures Classics is an art-house film division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in December 1991 that distributes, produces and acquires specialty films from the United States and around the world. Its co-presidents are Michael Barker and Tom Bernard...
. - Interview with director Eugene Jarecki at Now Playing magazine.
- Why We Fight BBC'sBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Storyville page on Why We Fight - Why We Fight on Lower Manhattan Project, a site dedicated to 9/11 culture.
Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki is an author and a dramatic and documentary filmmaker based in New York.His works include Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Reagan, Freakonomics , Quest of the Carib Canoe, and Season of the...
, is a 2006 documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
-era eponymous propaganda movies
Why We Fight
Why We Fight is a series of seven war information training films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S...
commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
.
Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 22 January 2006, and then was released on DVD on 27 June 2006, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation. It was established in November 1979 as Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment, releasing 20 titles: The Anderson Tapes, Bell, Book and Candle, Born Free, Breakout,...
. The documentary also won one of the 2006 Grimme Awards in the competition "Information & Culture"; the prize is one of Germany's most prestigious for TV productions.
Synopsis
Why We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military–industrial complex and its fifty-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 Invasion of Iraq2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American public was misled so that the Government (incumbent Administration) could take them to war and fuel the military-industrial economy maintaining American political dominance in the world. Interviewed about this matter, are politician John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
, political scientist and former-CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Ashby Johnson was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972...
, politician Richard Perle
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle is an American political advisor, consultant, and lobbyist who began his career in government, a senior staff member to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970’s...
, neoconservative commentator William Kristol
William Kristol
William Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel....
, writer Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, and public policy expert Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. He was appointed to the presidency by the Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008...
.
Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
, and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq; and that of a twenty-three-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death; and a female military explosives scientist who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
child from Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
in 1975.
Producer's list
The producer's list included "more than a dozen organizations, from the Canadian Broadcasting CorporationCanadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
to the United Kingdom's BBC, Estonia's ETV and numerous European broadcasters" but no U.S. names. The Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981 that actively advances the work of filmmakers and storytellers worldwide...
did, however, provide completion funding. Writer and director Jarecki said "serious examination of Eisenhower and the aftermath of his speech proved 'too radical' for potential American funders for his film" and except for Sundance, he "could not raise a dollar in the U.S."
Politicians
Senator John McCainJohn McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
Elected to the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
in 1986, he is a former U.S. Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war
Early life and military career of John McCain
The early life and military career of John Sidney McCain III spans the first forty-five years of his life . McCain's father and grandfather were admirals in the United States Navy. McCain was born on August 29, 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone, and attended many schools growing up as his family moved...
.
Richard Perle
Richard Perle
Richard Norman Perle is an American political advisor, consultant, and lobbyist who began his career in government, a senior staff member to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970’s...
, Chairman, Pentagon Defense Policy Board (2001–2003)
Worked the U.S. Government for three decades, and is an architect of the G. W. Bush Administration's foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
. As a writer, he regularly is published in conservative news publications.
William Kristol
William Kristol
William Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel....
, Editor, The Weekly Standard
A political theorist identified with the neoconservative movement, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century
Project for the New American Century
The Project for the New American Century was an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. that lasted from 1997 to 2006. It was co-founded as a non-profit educational organization by neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan...
think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
in 1997.
Civilians
Joseph CirincioneJoseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione is the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. He was appointed to the presidency by the Ploughshares board of directors on March 5, 2008...
, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
A senior associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...
, Washington, D.C.
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer, OC is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.Dyer was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen...
, Military Historian
He is a military historian, writer, and journalist who has worked for the Canadian, British, and American militaries. He published books, articles, information papers, and a radio series, about international affairs
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
.
Susan Eisenhower
Susan Eisenhower
Susan Elaine Eisenhower is a consultant, author, and expert on international security and relations between the Russian Federation and the United States of America. She is the daughter of John Eisenhower, and the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower...
, Granddaughter of President Eisenhower
Senior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute's director of programs. She is serving a third appointment to the Committee on International Security and Arms Control
Committee on International Security and Arms Control
The Committee on International Security and Arms Control , created in 1980 by the United States National Academy of Sciences , supports the nation and the public with his best members on concerns of international security and arms control. The CISAC maintains dialogues with Russia , China and...
(CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
.
John Eisenhower
John Eisenhower
John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower is the son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie. He is a retired United States Army officer and the author of several books of military history. He served as the U.S...
, Son of President Eisenhower, Military Historian
A military historian member of White House staff during his father's administration. He is a retired Brigadier General
Brigadier General
Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...
(AUS) and served as U.S. ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
to Belgium, 1969 and 1971.
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Ashby Johnson was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972...
, Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
1967-1973, Political Scientist
With a fifty-year career in foreign policy, he is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute
Japan Policy Research Institute
The Japan Policy Research Institute is a non-profit organization organized under section 501 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that was founded in 1994 by Chalmers Johnson and Steven C...
. An academic at the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
, he has written many articles and books.
Charles Lewis
Charles Lewis (journalist)
Charles Lewis is an investigative journalist based in Washington D.C. since 1977. Charles Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity and three other nonprofit organizations and is currently the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of...
, Center for Public Integrity
Founder, and ex-executive director, Center for Public Integrity
Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around...
—non-profit, non-partisan "watch-dog" organisation established in 1989—investigating and reporting their research about U.S. public policies
Wilton Sekzer, Retired police sergeant, New York City Police Department
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
/ Vietnam veteran
Vietnam veteran, door gunner from the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion, whose son was killed on 9/11. After the attacks, he says the Bush Administration made him believe Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
was responsible. He e-mailed every military branch, asking if his son's name might be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. Later, he is uncertain if he should regret his actions, after hearing President Bush claim he does not know from where people got the idea that there was a link between Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
and the 9/11 attacks.
William Solomon
Twenty-three-year-old soldier. Deployed to Iraq on 10 January 2005, for 18 months, as a helicopter mechanic. It appears Solomon made it to Sergeant in the 1st Battalion 52nd Aviation Regiment
52nd Aviation Regiment (United States)
The 52nd Aviation Regiment is an aviation regiment of the U.S. Army.-Lineage:Constituted 31 May 1940 in the Regular Army as Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 204th Quartermaster BattalionActivated 10 June 1942 at Compton, California...
, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, according to a website that reports on different activities of soldiers. There is [a photo of Solomon] and a Specialist talking to basketball coaches in Kuwait at Camp Virginia. The coaches are on their way to Iraq to participate in Operation Hardwood 5 which is a program that brings US basketball coaches to the American troops in the Middle East.
Frank "Chuck" Spinney, Retired Military Analyst
Lehigh University
Lehigh University
Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...
-schooled mechanical engineer (class of 1967), worked in the USAF, in Ohio, before working in the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation in 1977. He became a harsh critic of the Pentagon, later known as the "Conscience of the Pentagon", when he attacked the spiraling spending increase in the report "Defense facts of life", published in 1982, later known as the "Spinney Report", which earned a cover on "Time" magazine.
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, Author of Imperial America
Writer, playwright, screen writer, novelist, and essayist, he has written books on American foreign policy explaining the American empire.
Military participants
'Fuji' and 'Tooms'U.S.A.F. stealth fighter pilots 'Fuji' and 'Tooms' dropped the first bombs on Baghdad city, starting the Iraq War in 2003.
Colonel Richard Treadway, Commander USAF Stealth Fighter
Stealth aircraft
Stealth aircraft are aircraft that use stealth technology to avoid detection by employing a combination of features to interfere with radar as well as reduce visibility in the infrared, visual, audio, and radio frequency spectrum. Development of stealth technology likely began in Germany during...
Squadron
Vice-Commander of the 49th Fighter Wing
49th Fighter Wing
The 49th Wing is an air combat unit of the United States Air Force and the host unit at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. The 49 WG is part of the Air Combat Command Twelfth Air Force....
of the U.S. Air Force
Colonel Walter W. Saeger, Jr., Director, U.S. Air Force Munitions Directorate
Director of the Air-to-Surface Munitions Directorate, Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill Air Force Base
Hill Air Force Base
Hill Air Force Base is a major U.S. Air Force Base located in northern Utah, just south of the city of Ogden, and near the towns of Clearfield, Riverdale, Roy, Sunset, and Layton. It is about north of Salt Lake City. The base was named in honor of Major Ployer Peter Hill of the U.S. Army Air...
in Utah.
Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen Kwiatkowski
Karen U. Kwiatkowski is an American activist and commentator. She is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S....
A retired U.S. Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...
of the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
working with the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
.
James G. Roche
James G. Roche
Dr. James G. Roche was the 20th Secretary of the Air Force, serving from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2005. Prior to serving as secretary, Roche served in the United States Navy for 23 years, and as an executive with Northrop Grumman....
, Secretary of the Air Force
Twentieth Secretary of the U.S. Air Force
Nguyet Anh Duong
Nguyet Anh Duong
Nguyet Anh Duong is a Vietnamese American scientist responsible for the creation of the Thermobaric weapon.She is noted as the "Scientist who developed the bomb that ended the war with Afghanistan" by the Vietnamese American National Gala.-Biography:...
Inventor of the thermobaric bunker buster
Bunker buster
A bunker buster is a bomb designed to penetrate hardened targets or targets buried deep underground.-Germany:Röchling shells were bunker-busting artillery shells, developed by German engineer August Cönders, based on the theory of increasing sectional density to improve penetration.They were tested...
bomb, refugee from South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
DVD commentators
Colonel Lawrence B. WilkersonLawrence Wilkerson
Lawrence B. "Larry" Wilkerson is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell...
, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
From 1984 to 1987, Col. Wilkerson was Executive Assistant to Admiral Stewart A. Ring, U.S.N., Director for Strategy and Policy (J5) USCINCPAC. In the 1990s Col. Wilkerson was Director of the U.S.M.C. War College, Quantico, Virginia. He has written much about military and national security affairs in mainstream and professional journals.
See also
- List of American films of 2006
- Military-industrial complexMilitary-industrial complexMilitary–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
- Military KeynesianismMilitary KeynesianismMilitary Keynesianism is the accusation that John Maynard Keynes advocated government economic policy in which the government devotes large amounts of spending to the military in an effort to increase economic growth. In fact, the English economist John Maynard Keynes advocated that government...
External links
- Why We Fight official site at Sony Pictures ClassicsSony Pictures ClassicsSony Pictures Classics is an art-house film division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in December 1991 that distributes, produces and acquires specialty films from the United States and around the world. Its co-presidents are Michael Barker and Tom Bernard...
. - Interview with director Eugene Jarecki at Now Playing magazine.
- Why We Fight BBC'sBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Storyville page on Why We Fight - Why We Fight on Lower Manhattan Project, a site dedicated to 9/11 culture.